Posts with tag patch 2.1.0

Fatforprom just wrote in tipping us to this movie he found showing off the Patch. 2.1.0 Force of Nature bug. Now, I don't know whether this is a bug or just a practical joke, but it sure is funny. Who knew that trees could be so darm attractive to the wildlife!

If it were me I would think twice before using this spell. Unless of course I had an army behind me to back me up.

Previously on Moviewatch...

We love Blizzard EU CM Ommra, because he's (or she!) is always the one to keep us up to date on the most recent hotfixes coming out of Blizzard. And there seem to be a few more than usual this week -- because of the patch, perhaps? (No matter how long they're on the PTRs, they're never bug-free!) But if you're wondering what's happened so far this week in the world of hotfixes, here's a list for you:

• Linking a Poison Recipe or Hunter Pet Ability in a chat message will no longer cause a disconnect.
• Seer Olum will no longer despawn as quickly after being rescued from Serpentshrine Cavern.
• Coilfang Ambushers can no longer be charmed.
• The Lurker Below will no longer emerge from the water before all adds are dead.
• Gruul's hateful strike will now target the second highest on the threat list instead of the third highest.
• The gem vendors in Thrallmar and Honor hold are now once again available.
• Al'ar's Meteor ability will now do less damage and its damage will no longer be divided between multiple targets.
• We're working on a hotfix for the problem where Krosh Firehand's Spell Shield is not cast immediately upon entering combat for a Mage to Spell Steal. This was not an intended change and we hope to have it fixed soon.
• The hotfix for the Spell Shield has been deployed. The Spell Shield should be cast in a much more timely manner now.

I particularly like that first one!

In today's breakfast topic, I noted that I haven't gotten any gold spam in the time I've played since patch 2.1.0 came along. And oh, what a change it is! I was always a good little player, taking the time to report any gold selling spam to a GM, but usually by the time a GM got around to looking at my ticket, I'd have gotten at least five more piece of spam -- and that was if I opened my ticket during off-hours.

So what's the magical change that's stopped spam in its tracks this patch? Obviously, there's the new spam reporting system, which makes reporting anyone an easy task: just right-click on their name and select the "report spam" option. You'll no longer get whispers, see text, or receive mails from that player for the duration of your game session and the incident is automatically forwarded on to a GM. But even if every player were duitifully reporting every spammer, I wouldn't expect such a dramatic change in the level of spam. CM Drysc notes that as of the patch, trial accounts can no longer whisper other players -- at least not without players whispering them first. I don't know about you, but I think this simple step may have been the magic bullet.

We've all had at least a day (our European friends are a bit behind us, but I have no doubt they have also managed to form their opinions) to play with patch 2.1.0 and digest the many changes contained therein. While the Children's Week quests (and the non-combat pets you get from them) are super fun, but what I'm enjoying most is the lack of gold selling spam. At least for me, this near-constant nuisance has completely vanished since the patch came out -- though perhaps I'll have a different opinion tomorrow. So, I ask, what's your favorite aspect of patch 2.1.0?

For a certain kind of WoW player -- specifically, the kind that has addons out the wazoo -- the days after a new patch are always days of terror. Which part of my specially-customized setup doesn't work anymore? Where are my chat windows? Why can't I move? Dear God, how do I live?

While this addonpocalypse is somewhat less extensive than the one that destroyed virtually all addons last December, there's still a lot of stuff that's just not working. Wowinterface.com has a nice list of updated 2.1 addons, so if something's not working, you can always check and see if it's there. But not everything is fixed yet.

Personally, most of my AllDeuce UI is intact, but my Autobar and ag_UnitFrames have bitten the dust, and I'm getting a lot more errors. I can live without Autobar, but not having any unit frames is a little wearing, even though I have ArcHUD for the super-important stuff like health and energy. "Can you kick me out of the party because I can't leave?" "Can you open trade? I can't." "Who's the enemy targeting now?" Here's hoping that all the addons will be updated soon!

How many of your addons no longer work? How do you handle post-patch addon confusion?

With new patches come new problems. Disappearing items have caused Blizzard to hotfix and restart every realm, with the side effect of lots of realms being offline and some (including my home realm, Magtheridon) having disappeared entirely. I just got back from a weeklong vacation, and with it being patch day, I've been dying to get in-game. But other than staring at the realm list, what can you do when your realm is down?

1. Play with the character generator. Make the most attractive character you can for each race and gender. Then make the ugliest. (Does anyone ever use the human female with the wrinkled face?) Try to make a facsimile of your own appearance!
2. Try out some new realm types. Are PVP server chats really meaner than on RPPVP? How far can a level 1 get into enemy territory if you stick to the roads on a PVP server?
3. Create a reputation for yourself. Roll an Alliance and Horde character on a PVE server. Go into major cities and proceed to talk about how much of a jerk your alt on the other faction is. Feel free to make up outlandish stories of ninjaing, sexual harassment, etc. Then do the same on the other alt. See how many people you can get to whisper you and condemn your "actions."
4. Try to catch people cybering on RP servers. Or, if you're into that sort of thing, create a night elf/blood elf and do a little mailbox dancing, see how much money you get, and then donate it all to some lucky noob.
5. Hang with your guildies on Vent. It's amazing how much you can actually get done when the server's down. It's a good time for an officer meeting, or an all-guild DOTA competition, or finally creating that Screaming Raid Leader Drinking Game you've been working on.

Have you been annoyed by the recent outages? What do you do when WoW is up, but your realm isn't?

If you were attempting to play this evening, you may notice your realm vanishing out from under you. That's because Blizzard has been in the process of rolling restarts to fix a serious issue with today's 2.1.0 patch. As of 3:45 PM PST (that's 6:45 PM to you east coasters), restarts began, with an anticipated downtime of 15 minutes for each realm. The problem that caused all this hubbub? The official forums are a bit flakey this evening, but reader SirCasey reports that stacked items taken from mailboxes are vanishing from players inventories -- and I don't know about you, but I can see this resulting in hundreds of gold lost. What to do if you've already lost something? Blizzard poster Hortus says talk to a GM, but makes no promises that they'll be able to restore items.

Update: CM Drysc reports at 6:30 PM PDT (9:30 PM EST) that complications from the earlier fix has prevented some realms from coming back online. However, they're working on bringing the remaining realms back online and plan to have all realms back online by 9:00 PM PDT (12:00 AM EST).

Each week, Daniel Howell contributes BigRedKitty, a column with strategies, tips and tricks for the hunter class sprinkled with a healthy dose of completely improper, sometimes libelous, personal commentary.

Editor's note: We think Damh and Hobbes are trying to be funny. Rogues really don't need to be worried about what happens when they log in tonight. At least we're pretty sure they don't.

10. Rogues haven't just been nerfed, they've been completely eliminated from the game. Pfft. Gone. All Alliance Rogues are now Shaman, all Horde Rogues are now Paladins. Same gear though, so you'd better get to the Auction House quick.

9. Paladins can no longer pull. They can still tank but if they are in a party of two or more, they cannot attack a mob than has an empty threat list. The Blizzard programmers stated in the patch notes, "Until they learn how to pull without getting so much aggro that a hunter cannot peel off a mob to trap, we're not gonna change this."

8. Holy Priests, Holy Paladins and Resto Druids now get a monthly gold allowance sent in the mail. For every hour they play they get 5 gold tribute. "You'd pay them yourself if you could get a Shadow Lab run more than once per week, wouldn't you?" said Nikoli Bransdorf, instance programming intern and Beastmaster hunter.

7. New profession: Sheriff. Start out by putting the beggars in the pokie, move on to finding the level-one gold spammers and putting them in chains, and at 375 you will be able to fix bugged instances and quests with your Ancient Baton of Compliance.

6. The fishing arsenal has been upgraded to include spears, harpoons and an epic Engineering item, the Goblin Infisherator XL. Chunk this daddy into the ocean and a mild seismic explosion tosses enough marine life onto the beach that every Naga in Stranglethorn Vale will call you Master.

Still want to hear the top five? Keep reading.

2.1.0 appears to be just over the horizon. Some people are speculating that it might hit today, while others are guessing we'll be waiting a week. Nonetheless, it's time for everyone to prepare for the changes to come -- which means some of us are about to suck it up and respec.

Blizzard has already announced that they don't consider any of the talent tree changes major enough to warrant free respecs and talent point refunds for any class. But most classes have seen at least a couple of modifications, whether for specific talents (rogues and Imp Sap, paladins and Illumination) or general effectiveness (shamans, hunters.) Several shamans I know plan to spec resto instead of enhancement/elemental after the patch, and at least one pally in my guild is going to give prot a chance.

Personally, I'll be respeccing both my rogue and my paladin. It may be time for my rogue to finally give 41-20-0 or 30-26-5 a chance, and my AOE-grinding protadin is definitely picking up improved Holy Shield. Are you going to respec in 2.1.0? If so, what are you going to respec to?

Another week, another Tuesday maintenance. And it's not even a rolling restart week! So here we are all twiddling our thumbs and waiting for the servers to come back online. And, alas, while we've all no doubt been having fun playing with patch 2.1 on the test realms, we do know that today isn't the day. Of course this only leaves us with lots of room for speculation -- so I'm asking you, good readers, when do you think patch 2.1 will be headed towards the live realms? The patch has been running on the test realms since April 13th, which means next Tuesday's maintenance will be approaching the 4-week mark that I always use as a general guideline for patch releases. But Blizzard has been known to surprise even me. So let's hear your predictions -- when do you think we'll see patch 2.1 on the live realms?

Blizzard has quietly disabled the upcoming Children's Week holiday. There was a brief announcement in the EU forums saying the event would be disabled until after the 2.1 patch and on the US site the holiday's date has simply been changed to "TBD." In the past the week-long event's start has varied from the 1st of May to the 9th of May, so if 2.1 is released soon perhaps it won't be pushed back very far. Now my question is... what the heck does Children's week have to do with the patch? Should we expect something new and different this year or is there just some technical issue with deploying a patch during the middle of a special event the Blizzard team is trying to avoid?

[Thanks to all who sent in tips on this one!]

Over at Blessing of Kings, Coriel has a great explanation of how the paladin's to-be-changed Illumination talent -- which has been happily residing in the holy tree since the game's release -- became such a thorny problem.

The talent (as it exists now) returns the base mana cost of a healing spell to the paladin when the healing spell crits. (It costs 5 talent points to bring it to this level of effectiveness and requires 15 points in the talent tree. So a fully maxxed illumination will cost you 20 talent points in the holy tree.) The end result is that, overall, the paladin receives a mana discount on their healing spells equal to their spell crit rate. Prior to patch 1.9, a paladin could boost his or her holy spell crit rate by 5% through talents (priests have a similar talent that boosts holy spell crit), but it was difficult for paladins to get any other spell crit gear. The plate itemization simply didn't exist and there was heavy competition for generic items that a paladin could use like the Azuresong Mageblade.

As you may or may not be aware, a patch was rolled out on the public test realms yesterday, bringing us all sorts of cool screenshots of Hyjal and Illidan. However, these weren't the only changes the patch brought us. On the test realm forums, Kainazzo has been kind enough to compile a list of changes for us.

Of course there's the expected bug fixes:

• (Hunter) Viewing Pet Details no longer results in a fatal error
• (Hunter) Using aimed shot and steady shot no longer results in turning 180 degrees
• (Other) Alliance epic flying mount animation has been fixed.
• (Items) The meta gems bought with Spirit Shards now function properly.
• (Items) Almost every set bonus was reworked to stack properly with other set bonuses

However, perhaps the most interesting changes were to Paladins:

• Illumination now returns 60% of base mana cost, up from 50%.
• 1h weapon spec is now working, and is causing 5% more damage to spells like consecrate and holy shield while a 1 handed weapon is equipped.

Is illumination still worth it at 60% instead of 50%? Blizzard, how about you push the numbers to 75% and we'll talk.

Tobold reports that in patch 2.1.0 Blizzard is planning on getting rid of gold farmers in just three simple steps. So in patch 2.1.0, you should expect the following:

• The ability to send items, gold, or CoD packages via mail will be removed. You will only be able to send letters via the in-game mail system.
• The ability to freely set prices in the auction house will be removed. Since players could transfer gold by putting up a worthless item for a high-price buyout, the minimum bid and buyout amounts will now be set automatically.
• The ability to transfer gold via the trade window will be removed. However, to allow people to market tradeskills, the trade window will be transformed into a tradeskill window -- allowing the crafter to select a recipe and the buyer to insert materials, for a pre-set fee. When the buyer provides materials and the money, the crafted item winds up directly in the buyer's pack after crafting.

With no ways to transfer gold to potential buyers, the gold farming industry will quickly go out of business. Huzzah to Blizzard for finally solving this problem!

So the patch notes that we've mentioned recently on WoW Insider have turned out to be fake. And Blizzard doesn't seem any nearer to giving us real patch notes. So how does a curious player know what to look forward to in the next major content patch? Fortunately, EU MvP Schwick has an excellent compilation of every little bit of patch information that's been confirmed by Blizzard. It's not much information, but it is all we know for certain just now.

So for patch 2.1.0, you can expect the following changes:

• Feign Death fix
• New Rogue stealth animation
• More Humanoid Succubus CC
• PvP Matching system
• The Black Temple (aka the Black Citadel)
• Gruul's Lair changes
• Professions & Items
• Golden Hare fix
• Spellcloth fix
• Auction House Gem-section
• Flight path changes
• Blade's Edge Mountain graveyard
• Draenei quest drop fixes